Los Banos – conclusion

Los Banos in art

 

Inside the Los Baños compound, all was suddenly noise and confusion. “That morning, as I walked out of the barracks with my family to line up for 7:00 am roll call, I looked up into the sky and over a field near our camp saw several C-47 transport planes,” the paratroopers took approximately 15 minutes to assemble and move the 900 yards or so to the barrier around the compound.

Los Banos line of amtraks

“After a rapid assembly,” remembered Lieutenant Ringler, “there was only minor enemy resistance, which was eliminated.” Some of the men used a dry riverbed on the edge of the drop zone that angled toward the camp to provide cover as they rushed forward.”

467th Reg. support

“Within 20 minutes of the first shots, the firing seemed to die down. Most of the Japanese guards were either killed or fled to the south and west, away from the incoming paratroopers. All the guards doing their morning calisthenics in an open area to the south of the compound were either killed or scared off.

Los Banos liberation, pic taken by Jerry Sam

“Although most of the sentries and pillboxes had already been silenced, some had to be eliminated by the Company B paratroopers”, remembered Robert A. Wheeler, a 12-year-old internee.

Los Banos evac internee on stretcher

Young internee Bill Rivers remembered, “A whole herd of the damnedest vehicles I’d ever seen, roared into the camp. When I saw the white star with the two bars on each side, I feared that the Russians had somehow rescued us, as I’d never seen that insignia before. But when I heard one soldier profanely order [another soldier nicknamed] ‘Red’ to give him the field phone, I believe I heaved a sigh of relief.”

Dr, Dana Nance & wife, Anna in TN 1939. Only medical doctor in camp

Two of the first men to jump out of the amtracs were General Whitney and his mysterious civilian companion. As Major Burgess recalled, the two men went into the camp and after a short time General Whitney came out carrying “several boxes well tied together containing documents which he deemed to be of considerable military significance. I didn’t believe it at first, but he was really sincere about keeping those boxes together and was with them all of the time.”

USN nurse Dorothy Sill (US Navy pic)

Although the contents of those boxes were never made public, it is believed that the information on the captured papers was used against the Japanese during subsequent war crimes trials.

 

About 9:30 am, 21/2 hours after the Los Baños Raid had begun, Colonel Gibbs and his fully loaded amtracs finally began the slow crawl back to San Antonio and Laguna de Bay. Those people that could not fit in the amtracs began walking back to the beach.

Maryknoll sister before becoming prisoners

Father William R. McCarthy, an internee Catholic priest, remembered those that walked. “Men, women and children followed,” he wrote, “bundles under their arms or dangling from sticks, carrying their scant possessions with them…. With many others we walked over the highway of freedom against a background of flames, as one straw barracks quickly followed another in an all-consuming fire fanned by the morning breeze.”

Registration and temporary housing back at Old Bilibid

Unfortunately, when the Japanese discovered that the Los Baños prisoners had been spirited away from under their very noses, they retaliated against the Filipino residents in the barrio of Los Baños. Shortly after finding the internment camp empty and destroyed by fire, the Japanese rounded up an estimated 1,400 Filipinos, tied them to the stilts holding up their houses, and set the structures on fire.

For these crimes and for others committed against the Filipino people and the internees at Los Baños, Lt. Gen. Fujishige and Warrant Officer Sadaaki Konishi, a brutally sadistic supply officer at the camp, were summarily found guilty by the subsequent war crimes commission and executed.

Sadaaki Konishi – as a POW himself

This was an extraordinary operation , expertly carried out in one day of dramatic courage and cooperation in battle.  Not one person was lost saving 2,122 people.

 

Resources: The Los Baños Raid and History of the 11th Airborne Division, by Gen. E.M. Flanagan Jr.; Rescue at Los Baños, by Bruce Henderson.

Click on images to enlarge.

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Military Humor – 

 

 

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Farewell Salutes – 

Masao Akiyama – Portland, OR; US Army, WWII, ETO, 100th Battalion

Billy Bates – Dallas, TX; US Army Air Corps, WWII, LT., P-51 pilot

Max Desfor (104) – Rockville, MD; Korea, War photographer, Pulitzer Prize

Ralph Finch – Santa Rosa, CA; US Army, WWII, medic

John Gazo – Windsor, CAN; RC Air Force, WWII, 408 “Goose” Squadron, POW

Carlos Hathcock – North Little Rock, AR; USMC, Vietnam, Gunnery Sgt., Silver Star

Gustave Jacobsen – Tacoma, WA; US Army Air Corps, WWII, B-17 gunner 32 missions (Ret. 33y.)

Maureen Lancaster – Norwich, ENG; WRAF, WWII, radio operator

Bernard Madnick – CT & Delray, FL; US Navy, WWII, USS Ellyson

Verrill ‘Sonny’ Worcester – Jonesport, ME; US Army, Vietnam, Iran, Sgt. Maj. (Ret. 22 y.)

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